<html><head><title>An operating system for your PC</title></head><!--(c) G.C. '97, '98 A.R.R.-->
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<center><h3>An operating system for your PC</h3></center>
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<h4>A Disc <i>Operating</i> System?</h4>
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 How many years old is the PC concept of a disc operating system? Sixteen is a good answer.
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 If any other piece of computer software had been on the market for that long, people would have given up on it long ago. Why then did they cling on to DOS, even past 1995? Why still do they ship operating systems on disc, not on firmware?
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 It was once considered sensible to produce an operating system on disc: it's cheap to copy discs, bringing price down, and upgrades are easy to install. However, while upgrading my operating system, on ROM, costs me less than sixty pounds, Windows 95 is around 180. It's also very simple to replace elements of the ROM from data on a drive, if necessary. On the other hand, operating system data on disc takes a <i>great</i> deal longer to load than that on ROM and having your OS on a writable media invite viri to come and mess up your computer.
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<h4>Windows 95:</h4>
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 Bill Gates has proudly proclaimed Windows 95 as a totally new operating system. While Windows 3.x was just a front; this was to be a true interface to the computer.<p>
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 Except it isn't.
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 Windows 95 still works through the old DOS systems; although it can emulate DOS in the multitasking environment, Windows 95 still loads through DOS, as anyone who's tried to use a DOS program under it or set the options to start up without the GUI knows.
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 The new OS still needs its DOS end configuring; if you thought that Windows 95 made you configuration simple, guess again: it supports that really weird memory management, which was attached to the 16-bit computers of yesteryear; Windows 95 installs (several copies of) old DOS utilities.
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 The only reason it gets to do this much is that is is a fully 32-bit operating system. I recall seeing an advert (on the Microsoft CD Sampler, no less) for their new game, Fury 3, in which they proclaimed its <i>32-bit power</i> as something new and novel. Since the 386, PC users have had 32-bit processors yet, as late as 1995, 32-bit software is something novel. What could have been holding software back from using the full power of the computer for so many years. That would be Windows 3.1: the main Windows API was a sixteen bit interface, which was more than a slight bottleneck. It, like DOS, displays the problem of code designed for a seriously outdated, 16-bit processor becoming standard.
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<h4>Windows NT 4:</h4>
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 This is Microsoft's <i>real</i> attempt at leaving behind DOS; this time, it actually partially succeeds: it bypasses the BIOS and drives hardware directly; the maze of incompatible, un-standardised hardware that grew like a weed at the start of the life of the PC has been replaced with a list of standard hardware. For a change, it's actually portable and we now have Alphas running it. But Microsoft just don't seem to want to sell it.
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 They have intentionally put all their efforts into promoting the technically far more defective Windows 95 and all but discouraged purchase of Windows NT, by making it much more expensive. You can either by 95, or NT 4, which is the stable version; so where does that leave 95 in the debugging stakes? Alas, this looks set to continue, with Microsoft already shipping Windows 98. Microsoft seems set to cling on to DOS for a long time to come.
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